Fluxus Music: Clazziquai Project (out takes)

So here's just some fun videos of silliness. Enjoy

Fluxus Music: Clazziquai Project

So Clazziquai Project is back with their new track "Can't Go On My Own", which is a sweet track that exemplifies the brilliance of their music. Great harmonies over a beautiful music track. Alex and Horan are, in my opinion, the most awesome couple in Korean music. They are both talented to the gills on their own, but they shine the brightest when they work together. This track also features rapping from none other than Kim Jin Pyo, who most people have probably never heard of, but really should check out as well.

So what makes Clazziquai Project so amazing?

Everything!

(Seriously, they are the coolest group to come out of Korea, hands down)

DJ Clazzi (Kim Sung Hoon) started of as a web designer who would make music in his spare time. He had gone to college in Canada, and while I have not seen any direct quote on the matter, this seems to be when he met Alex and his sister Christina, who was the original female vocalist during the formation period of the group. They released three albums together while experimenting with different sounds and styles. Christina then decided to leave, and in came Horan. Now I have no idea how they sounded when Christina was in the group, since it seems impossible to find the original three albums, but it is hard to imagine anything sounding more beautiful than the when Alex and Horan harmonize.

To harmonize is to make two voices blend into one sound, and they do this masterfully. The way they play off of each other and with each other you would think they are more than just friends and colleagues. They have denied that such a relationship is going on, but either way fate has brought together two amazing souls. But Clazziquai Project is about more than great music and vocals...

... It's also about remixes! Every album since their first official album Instant Pig has had a follow up remix album, or .5 album. These often have a more electronic or house sound to them, and while the standard albums contain some wonderful ballads and soundtrack like songs, the .5 albums are full of great music to dance or workout to. Now these often feature guest producers or vocalists, but sometimes it is just the trio trying a different sound with a song or just doing a track that didn't fit into the standard album. 

They also sometimes choose to edit in clips from a movie rather than make a MV for tracks off the .5 albums. While I have seen some people complain, they forget that DJ Clazzi is often busy writing new music, Alex has an acting and solo career, and Horan is also the lead vocals for the group Ibadi. These are busy people.

Now if all of this is not enough to get you into their music, let me add some more reasons. Tablo (Epik High), Verbal and PE'Z (m-flo), Bobby Kim, Han (W&Whale), and Yasutaka Nakata. These, among many others including people from newer groups like Sunny Hill and 2am, are some of the artists that have done tracks with Clazziquai Project or their solo works.

So check them out if you haven't already, and if you have, check out some of their music you probably missed (there's a lot). I don't think I've heard anyone yet say they were disappointed by Clazziquai Project.

The gift of Fluxus

So I have wanted to write a post on Fluxus Music for quite some time, but life became distracting. It is by far my favorite Korean music label, having outstanding musicians, vocalists, and producers, all with great musicality.

As I started doing more research to find videos to post and reminding myself of why I'm a fan of pretty much everything they do, I realized that there is really too much to do in one post. So for now, I will give you this link to their site, and a link to their YouTube account, and I will try to be back soon with posts covering each artist, and even some of the ones no longer with Fluxus, but that I still love.

And here's a bit of holiday cheer to keep you going till then. (not that anyone reads this, but whatever)

Seriously, how could you not love Alex's antics?

An old school K-pop fans take on PSY's anti-American rapping

So while I am not a fan of PSY or his music, I have been seeing several people posting about his "Anti-American" raps from 2004. I am just going to paste my previous replies here, and everyone can take it for what they want. [edited for grammatical correctness]

I remember hearing about the blow back in Korea after the Military courts found the soldiers in the American tank that ran over two Korean girls not guilty. It was really the last straw in a sense of outrage over several rapes and "disorderly conduct" cases where the American servicemen (and yes, they were all men) were acquitted or given very light slaps on the wrist. Having [relatively] recently become something of a fan of Korean music and film culture that was growing at the time, reading the details of what happened from translated Korean news sites, and seeing how differently the narrative read from what American news site[s] mentioned, this was kind of my awakening to just how much bullshit was in our news cycles. It took me a while more to fully understand why PSY and others said some of the things they said, and to realize that while vitriolic, it was largely based on rage at how they were being treated like their citizens did not matter, and artistic expression. Now I've never been much of a fan of PSY's style, but I certainly don't care that he made these statements, and as a human I share his rage against the violence that American troops have been waging against the Korean people for 60 years now.

Now while it can be construed that I am some sort of anti-American whatever from that, we as a people, and as a geopolitical entity, claim to have some sort of moral superiority. How can [we] make such claims and then let our servicemen get away with rape, murder, destruction of property, and disorderly conduct upon the civilian populations of countries we are supposedly allies with? This is not isolated to Korea. It has happened in Okinawa, Germany, France, Kuwait, Philippines, and on, and on. At what point do we start seeing the rest of the world as human beings just like us that deserve to live without fear from our troops that are supposedly there for their protection, and justice should any of those troops commit a crime? This is an extension of our countries ongoing problems with racism and sexism. Far too often Americans, all of us, tend to want to separate everyone else from us, to label them as something different, and therefor inferior and not worthy of the same rights and privileges we take for granted. This must end.

Sorry, but I feel strongly about this because I know victims of exactly this kind of violence. I have listened to their stories. If I did not know so many good service members personally, or have some understanding of the psychological problems military life (especially during war) can cause, I could probably write far more vitriolic lyrics than what PSY did.

Technical difficulties

So I was planning on having a new post up this week, but since I finally got the parts to get my desktop back up and running I have been spending all my time working on that instead. If all goes well I should have it all configured the way I want by Friday and perhaps I'll get a post out on Saturday. Planning on doing a little post on one of the lesser known Fluxus artists, cause Fluxus is awesome.

A Korean's view on the difference between K-fans and I-fans.

(Preface: So this is from my friend oniontaker's Formspring  He's a Korean expat and awesome subber, and genuinely cool dude. Obviously the first part is the question asked of him.)

 

You know how there are fanwars all over international kpop fandoms, right? I've always wondered if the same issues are experienced among kfans as well. For instance, the fanwar that happened between some international ELFs and Sones over the GDA Daesang.

It used to be that only K-fans used to call each other out and 'fight' in an explicit sense, but with the sudden surge in the number of i-fans enjoying K-pop it seems like dividing lines are already appearing and that fanwars are becoming more frequent.

Clearly, having the same interests, iELF and K-ELF are likely to get angry over the same thing, as are iSONE and K-SONE, iHottest and K-Hottest etc. So if there is a serious issue, both the international wing and Korean wings of any fandom are likely to be involved.

But it would seem that in Korea, people of all ages take sides of allegiance, whereas internationally the demographic of passionate fans seems to be concentrated in teenagers.

Teenagers probably won't take very kindly to this but it's teens tend to be more self-centred, insecure and emotional idiots due to the transitional effects of puberty and the peer pressures in school life. So they tend to be more over-dramatic about everything, whereas the older fans are more chilled and couldn't give a fuck about what other fandoms think.

This makes international fans a potentially more volatile group.

Some of the exceptions would be DC08 and the frenzy over Jay Park in 2009. But boygroups tend to have very young fans who are passionately for (and in this case for antis, passionately against) certain figures.

K-fandoms have a long history. Perhaps this is why they have mellowed or matured. There are still people who leave hate messages on public message boards but big fan communities frown on trolling and fanwar behaviour. They make it a point to discourage members from engaging in conflict.

Take the Korean site bestiz for example: it is prolific and every idol group shares the same forum, with a Big Bang thread on top of a TVXQ thread on top of a SuJu thread on top of a Big Bang thread on top of a SNSD thread etc. Yet nobody trolls fans of another group and if anything, posts anything they are curious about. This kind of behaviour is unthinkable in say, on the 6theory forums.

A sad day for an old troll...

I just read that it's been confirmed that Eugene is getting married to Ki Tae-Yeong. It has been confirmed by their respective entertainment companies and the celebrity wedding planner Yuna Kim, who will be directing the wedding. While many fans of today's Kpop probably know her best as an actress, Eugene was my bias out of S.E.S. back in the day. The more depressing part is that this is probably foretelling of many more marriages to come for many of my favorite Kpop artists from that time. I'm gonna go drink a couple bottles of soju to drown out my sorrow.